Not long ago, if you walked into a wine shop looking for a good
Cabernet that would age well ― a special bottle to hang onto
for a child's graduation, say ― the clerk's advice would
likely be: Drink California Cab now, but buy French Bordeaux to put
away. Today, thanks to a recent restaging of a legendary 1976
California versus France tasting, you might hear something new.

Thirty years ago, at the "Judgment of Paris," a California
Cabernet (Stag's Leap Wine Cellars 1973 S.L.V.) stunned the judges
― many of whom were French ― by scoring higher than any
Bordeaux in the lineup. According to Karen MacNeil, author of
The Wine Bible and longtime
Sunset contributor, right after outrage in France came
disbelief. It was a fluke; a New World wine couldn't possibly have
fairly swept the field.

The French found a way to live with it, though. Their theory:
All about fruit, California wines show well when they're young.
More minerally, with firmer tannins, Bordeaux are made to age.
Stage the tasting with some years on the wines, and the California
wines wouldn't hold up.

The proof was in the bottle this year. The organizers of that
Paris tasting gathered the original 10 wines and two panels ―
one in London and one in Napa ― to blind-taste them again,
for a 30th anniversary reality check. MacNeil tasted alongside the
Napa panel at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the
Arts. "Many in the room expected the results to flip-flop," she
says. At the very least, she expected to be able to write in her
notes about a given wine, "Probably California … "

But as in the first round, it was virtually impossible to
distinguish the California wines from the French ones. And this
time around, California took not just the top spot; it took the
first
five places. The highest-scoring wine: 1971 Ridge Monte
Bello Cabernet Sauvignon (which had finished fifth in the 1976
tasting). And it's not even from Napa; it's from the Santa Cruz
Mountains.

Will new wines age as well?

Of course, that was then, and this is now. It's no secret that
California vintners are making wine differently than they did in
the '70s. Our taste (or our critics', or both) runs to wines with
bigger, riper fruit (which translates to more alcohol and less
acid) and mellower tannins. Since the trio of critical elements
that wine needs to age well consists of solid fruit, good acid, and
firm tannins, newer West Coast Cabs almost certainly won't live as
long.

With the renewed attention on aging, MacNeil believes "vintners
just might say, 'You know, we're making wines that are too
outrageous. We've abandoned something valuable we should get back
to.'" She expects some vinters to pull in the reins a little bit on
big, ripe fruit and build wines for a slightly longer haul
again.

Even so, considering how well California's wines, fruit-driven
even in 1976, have held up for 30 years, you might just hear that
wine shop clerk say something until now uncommon: "Take a bet on
California."